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The Dialect of the Euphrates Bedouin 99 the dialect of the euphrates bedouin 99 THE DIALECT OF THE EUPHRATES BEDOUIN, A FRINGE MESOPOTAMIAN DIALECT Bruce Ingham 1. Introduction In the spring of 1977 I was able to record material from three sources which showed a similar type of dialect. One of these I recorded in Kuwait in the area of al-Rauḏatain and two others in the area north west of Nāṣiriyyah in Iraq. These were all recorded from nomads, who were grazing camels at the time. The dialects were interesting in that they showed a resemblance both to the South Mesopotamian type, the so called gilit dialects1, and to the Najdi type. Geographically the nearest examples of the Najdi type would have been either that of the Muṭair, ʿAwāzim and Rashāyidah tribes in Kuwait and Eastern Saudi Arabia, or the Shammar and Ḏafīr in Northern Saudi Arabia. The two Bedouin groups in the Nāṣiriyyah area identified themselves as the Al Ḥumaid and the Rufaiʿ, while those in Kuwait identified themselves only as Ahl al-Shimāl ‘People of the North’ and I will use that term in this paper to refer to them. These latter were in fact only one family i.e. one tent in the vicinity where I interviewed them. There may however have been more of them nearbye over the admit- tedly rather flat horizon. The Rufaiʿ group visited consisted also of one tent encamped near the Hollandi Canal near a village of Sudan marsh dwellers at a place called Jisr Sūdān. There were four or five other tents in the vicinity. TheḤ umaid were a quite substantial group of perhaps twenty tents, from whom I was able to obtain answers to a short questionnaire. Later on in the 1980s and 1990s I met nomads in Saudi Arabia in the vicinity of Ḥafar al-Bāṭin who were also from the Rufaiʿ and spoke a similar type of dialect. All of these spoke a similar, though not identical type of dialect, which one could characterize as fringe south Mesopotamian, since it had the broad phonological inventory of the gilit type on the Lower 1 See Blanc (1964:passim) for a characterization of these dialects. 100 bruce ingham Euphrates, but differed in some features of distribution and morpho- logy. In this respect they showed some relationship, in so far as could be seen from the rather meagre data, to the North Najdi type of the Shammar. Although in terms of recent history i.e. the 19th and 20th centuries the Ḏafīr would have been nearer neighbours to them, their dialect showed Shammari features, which the Ḏafīr dialect does not show, corresponding to the later arrival of the Ḏafīr in the area, which is borne out by their own oral traditions and historical sources2. The groups interviewed are all in fact referred to by populations further south as Ahl al-Shimāl ‘people of the North’3 or Badu al-Furāt ‘Bedouins of the Euphrates’. This distinction arises presumably from the fact that other Bedouin of the region were accustomed to encoun- ter them in the north in the grazing period and recognized them as following a slightly different grazing pattern and spending a period of the year along the Euphrates. It was explained to me that this different grazing pattern was facilitated by their owning a different breed of camel the jūdi (pl jwāda), which was immune to certain types of insect which bred along the Euphrates in spring. This meant that as soon as grazing became scarce in the desert they could move into the banks of the Euphrates. Other more strictly Najdi Bedouin, did not keep the jwāda and could only come to the Euphrates in the high summer (gēḏ). Before that they were confined to wells in the desert south west of the Euphrates. Their dialect was also recognized as linking them to the northern region. A further distinguishing fea- ture of these groups is that they were all traditionally Shiʿah, which was in contrast to the Najdi Bedouin, but linked them to the tribes of the Lower Euphrates. 2 See Ingham (1986: 12-16). 3 The Rwalah of the Syrian desert also use this term, but slightly differently. It occurs frequently in Musil (1928). On p.138 it indicates tribes camping in the region of Hawran; then on p. 615 it indicates the Bani Ṣakhar and occurs without specifica- tion on p.641, 642 and 658 and in the Rwalah texts in Ingham (1995:127 and 134). It is important to remember that in the local geographic taxonomy of Eastern Arabia šimāl ‘north’ in fact refers to ‘north east’ ie down country towards the Euphrates. If reference is made to the true or polar north the word jadi ‘Pole star’ can be used. The use of this term by more strictly Arabian Bedouins to refer to these people may indi- cate ‘people towards the Euphrates’ or may even refer to their earlier location in the north when the later emigrants, the Shammar, ‘Anizah and Ḏafīr, were still in Najd to the south. Cantineau (1936:24) notes the term as used by Wetzstein (1868:163) as referring to the Syro/Jordanian tribes Sardiyyah, Bani Ṣakhar, Fuḥail, Sirḥān and Sharārat..
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